key assessment three

When researching both Woman magazine and Adbuters, I found that they are both at very different ends of the spectrum in terms of the content in the products. While Woman magazine is very stereotypical and uses lots of advertising, Adbusters has been more unconventional and not included any advertising unless it is culture jamming. 

The first thing I noticed when looking at these magazines was that Adbusters were a harshly left-wing magazine and produced very anti-capitalist articles throughout their product. one way in which they have proven their hatred towards capitalism is the "buy nothing day" movement. the movement was started in Canada in September of 1992 and has grown ever since. The day was made to stop people buying things for just one day as a way for society to examine the issue of overconsumption. the movement is currently thought to have 1 million participants across 65 countries and is quickly growing in popularity. The magazine's way of thinking is extreme and unconventional, breaking away from the conformities of mainstream magazines such as Woman. 

While Adbusters prefer to be controversial, Woman magazine was able to build a strong following by conforming to stereotypes of the mainstream ideologies and culture of the time. Examples of this can be seen plastered all over the front cover, from articles about how to improve your kitchen to Alfred Hitchcock explaining British women's "special magic". As well as this, the main image for the magazine is an average looking woman in her 30's. This tactic has been used to make their audience relate to the model because she looks like a typical housewife from the 1960's and they want to be like her. The use of this image can relate to Richard Dyer's theory on stereotypes because the model has been used for her look so the audience can clearly tell that she is representing a housewife. Looking further into the front cover, the font that the title has been written in is similar to that of a woman's handwriting and has been used to make the magazine look pretty and more feminine. A long with the writing, the pink background has also been used to appeal to the women walking past the product in the shop, however this shows a very restricted view of femininity. 

the second thing that I found interesting about Adbusters was how controversial some of their articles are. for example, an article entitled "Save the planet, kill yourself" was written to warm against humanities role in the increase of global warming. When it comes to this article, you can't get much further away from mainstream culture. rather than beating around the bush when talking about global warming, Adbuters have applied a more direct approach to dealing with the issue. While using statistics to back up their views, Adbusters uses the article to put the reader into an everyday situation and forces them to think about how their actions (such as buying tooth paste) could seriously damage our world. 

Such subverting viewpoints would never be found in Woman magazine. in the 1960's it was strange to find a woman with a job other than being a mother and a housewife. this meant that the magazine was able to easily conform to the ideologies of the time. including articles such has "a present for your kitchen" and "are you an A-level beauty?", Woman magazine shows that they believe women belong at home and to some extent are not capable of anything else besides coking and looking beautiful. with a completely opposite viewpoint to Adbusters, Woman magazine uses mainstream culture and stereotypes to their advantage, building their whole brand from doing so.

the third and final points that I found in both magazines was their approach on advertising. While Adbusters does contain some advertising, it's nowhere near the way that mainstream magazines would show them. the only advertising that is included in Adbusters is culture jamming adverts that use satire to send a message to the audience and usually make fun of a well-known brand. an example of this advertising is the made-up brand Zucchetti. this advert has bene made to make fun of mainstream magazines and their advertising while sending a serious message, which in my opinion is the way we take clean water for granted. the lack of advertising can be linked to George Gerbner's cultivation theory which states that the more that people are exposed to media products (such as advertising) the more likely they are to believe that the reality portrayed in these ads crosses over with our social reality. I believe that the lack of advertising has been done by Adbsuters to avoid exposure to false products (such as the way models look in the adverts) and expose their audience to more important matter such as global warming and poverty.

At the opposite end of the scale, Woman magazine uses advertising in their products to sexualise the female body as a way of appealing men. this use of advertising directly relates to patriarchal hegemony and their want for men to make up a larger secondary audience. an example of this is the Breeze soap advert which shows a naked woman covered in soap suds blowing a kiss towards the camera. this advertisement, while primarily used to sell the soap to women, has also been used to sexualise the female model's body and make the products male readers look at the ad. this way of advertising can relate to Stuart Hall's theory of representation of women in the media because it shows how a man's expectations of a woman to be skinny, soft and beautiful can be constructed through media advertising.

over all I can conclude that both Adbustes and Woman magazine are successful in their own right and have made a name for themselves by both conforming and subverting to mainstream media. as well as this I have discovered that both magazines are on very different ends of the scale from each other in terms of content and ideologies.